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What has Satan used to tempt you away from God? We know from today's reading from Matthew that Satan tries to use pleasures, presumption, and power to tempt Jesus away from the Father. The three P's, if you will. We all know that worldly pleasures definitely tempt people away, by making them think that they can find ultimate happiness in them. We know that people are tempted away from God by just presuming that God will save them in the end. This creates an apathy in their souls, because why do you need to try if no matter what you are saved? For sure we know that power tempts people away from God. Getting drunk on our own power and believing that we are gods is, well, something Satan knows well. I wasn't, though, tempted away by any of those things initially. I was tempted away by Satan telling me that God didn't really care about me. "If God really loved you, He'd never have let bad things happen to you." In an instant, I believed that lie, because, I thought, who needs God when He just leaves you to be hurt? With that poison in my heart, I walked away. In that walking away, I went to the three P's. I tried to find happiness in my life apart from God in pleasures. That didn't work. I wrongly presumed that just because I still believed in God, He'd eventually save me in the end. So, it didn't matter how I lived. Such ungrateful arrogance. And, I believed I had the power to heal myself and live my life my way. That didn't work either. Satan doesn't always tempt us by offering to add something to our lives. Sometimes, he makes us doubt that God even cares. That's what he did to me. Through all temptations, we must hold fast to our worship of the One True God and of Him alone. There is nothing that Satan could tempt you with that is better than staying close to God, Catholic Pilgrims--nothing at all. Have a blessed First Sunday of Lent.
Continue ReadingWe all have something that we need to be healed of, whether it be spiritual wounds, emotional ones, physical, or even mental. Doesn't it feel, though, that we aren't necessarily getting better--more healed--as a people? One reason that people don't heal is because they want to cling to the pain. That sounds crazy, but it's true. For me, I didn't want to let go of my anger. The anger radiating from my emotional pain fueled me. It allowed me to be the hurt, injured victim that couldn't be blamed for how things were going in my life. I didn't want to let go of my anger, because if I let go of my anger, what would I have left? Well, I'd have to face myself and who I had allowed myself to become and I didn't want to do that. The anger allowed me to direct my focus on others and that took the heat off of me. If we want to truly be healed, we must let go of wanting to cling to our sad story in order to give us a pass for how our life is turning out. A second reason that people don't heal is because they try to fix themselves on their own. You will need Christ. I tried to heal myself, while still clinging to my red-hot anger, mind you, and that went absolutely nowhere. I even--out loud--told God, I was turning my back on HIm. Then I marched off to fix myself. That did not work. At all. Healing doesn't mean that you forget. Healing doesn't mean that you get to a place where you condone bad things that happened to you. Sometimes, we will not be physically healed as we desire. But, God can give us the grace to handle physical issues with dignity and not self-loathe to the point of wallowing in our misery. That misery will always turn to bitterness. A hard truth to accept is that, at some point, everybody's body will stop working for them. Healing does mean that we invite God into our lives to give us grace, that we brave facing the ways that we have poorly tried to cope, that we forgive any who need forgiving and let God deal out the justice, and that, instead of clinging to our pain, we had it over to God and refuse to let it have power over us anymore. Lent is a perfect time to seek healing, Catholic Pilgrims. Have a blessed Friday.
Continue ReadingBecause I live on an Air Force base, weekday evening Masses tend to have a lot of civilians present who don't normally come to Sunday Mass because they live off base. The evening Ash Wednesday Mass is always full of unfamiliar faces of people getting off work and coming over to Mass before going home. Sometimes people don't quite get off work in time and so they are a little late. Yesterday, after Mass, a few people had gotten there late and missed getting ashes. Standing in the back, I heard them shyly ask Father if they could get some and he smiled and said, "Oh, don't worry, it's not required." I think he thought they believed they had done something wrong. They smiled and replied back, "Would it still be okay to get some?" "Of course, come with me." There is something about Ash Wednesday that speaks to the human heart almost more than any other holy day. I think the answer to why is found in something I read yesterday. "To take the ashes is to confess kinship with this world of dust, to declare our readiness to abdicate pretensions to omnipotence. Standing before God in this way, I profess that I am not God. I admit the chasm that separates me from Him. I accept the uncomfortable otherness of God. He is what I am not, yet my being bears His mark. I crave a completion no created thing can give. I walk this earth as a yearning incarnate. I am at home, yet a stranger, homesick for a homeland I recall but have not seen." --Bishop Erik Varden Our ashes remind me of us our littleness and our bodily mortality and I think Ash Wednesday is that day, where as lost as we may be, we still want to return and be reminded that we belong to God. Have a blessed Thursday, Catholic Pilgrims.
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